Open Office

I am not familiar with OpenOffice but I have read quite a bit about it. I am currently awaiting the delivery of my AAOne 1GB Windows XP 6 Cell 160GB unit, and while I do have an authorized copy of MS Office (I really just need Word, some limited PowerPoint and the very occasional Excel) I am wondering if I should DL and install Openoffice instead. Does it require less resources? Does it open faster? Just wondering about the "advantages" (other than the fact that it is free, but this advantage is negated by the fact that I have authorized Word, etc.)

Just curious about thoughts as I anxiously await the delivery of my new unit. (Also trying to learn what I need to do to minimize start-up times and keep it running as snappy as possible. My older Dell Inspiron is so bloated now it runs like a pig.)

 

I am not a big user of OpenOffice but this is what I have installed on my AA1 instead of Office and I am really satisfied! Takes less space and haves all functionnality

Thx

 

Thanx for the quick reply. It was just delivered! (Do you know how long I should charge it before first use? There is nothing about it in the printed material. I will poke around on line.)

 

Charging time shouldn't be that long, my AA1 was almost at full charge when I got it. When you're first setting up the netbook it's better to have it plugged in anyway. Basically you can start using it right away if you plug it in.

I uninstalled MS Office 2007 from my AAQ and installed MS Office 2003, and it works well. In playing with Word and Excel 2007 before I uninstalled, they seemed pretty responsive also. If you have Office 2003 or 2007, hey you've already paid for it, so why not use it? If you have an older version of Office, I would definitely take a look at OpenOffice.

I did take a look into OpenOffice, and it takes less disk space, but I that's not really an issue to worry about when you have a 160gb hdd. I haven't used OpenOffice Impress, but Writer and Calc open up a little slower than Microsoft Word and Excel. Once they are open, performance seems to be about the same to me, although I didn't check memory usage. Remember, though that MS Office 2003 was designed when 512mb ram was the standard, so the AA1 has plenty of ram to spare. In the end I decided to stay with MS Office 2003.

 

Thanx. Looks to be fully charged. I have deleted a bunch of stuff, including the trial version of MS Office, McAfee and the DVD software. The 6 cell battery does make it a little heavier but I think it will be a worthy tradeoff.

 

If you're looking for a nicely featured word processor with some snap in it's performance, I'd recommend Jarte (google it). I don't use it to the exclusion of Office or Open Office, but I like to use it when all I'm doing is taking notes in class.

 

In the instruction booklet, it says that you should "condition" the battery. Basicly you need to fully charge then fully discharge (until it shuts down by itself) 3 times. Then use it as normal.

 

If I had a MS Office License, I would use that, because it opens quicker than OpenOffice.
You can do a custom installation - leave just the needed (in this case - Word, Excel, Powerpoint)

 

Since I only need a word processor on my AA1 I use AbiWord - a free program that is small and fast. I use OpenOffice on my desktop computer and I have no problems with any documents.

Since it will read and write both Word and OpenOffice formats I can just transfer between the AA1 and my desktop computer with no problem.

 

Use google pack and get star office (from the same company but easier to install and more features)

 

GO-OO is the lighter version of open office, it's pretty good...just google...

But personally I like MS Office 2007...